


life is very long

by kaydeefalls



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Established Relationship, Friendship, Historical References, Immortal Husbands, Love, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Romance, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25367467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaydeefalls/pseuds/kaydeefalls
Summary: Andromache tells him: "The Greeks used to have seven different words for love. Well. More, probably. But I remember seven." She shrugs. "There are many ways to love one another, and life is long. We've time enough for them all. It's the only thing that makes it worthwhile."Nicky and his immortal family, over the centuries.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 301
Kudos: 2703





	life is very long

**Author's Note:**

> It's been about 48 hours since I first saw this movie. So that happened. Thanks to L for looking it over.

**Ludus**

After the better part of an admittedly uneventful week in Madrid, waiting for one of Booker's old contacts to get back to them with details on a potential job, Nile drags them all out to Plaza de Chueca one night in the spirit of team bonding. Andy rolls her eyes.

"Well," Nicky says indulgently, " _she's_ new, anyway."

"As long as we can get tapas first from that place, you know, with the banners," Joe suggests.

Andy frowns. "I think it closed down in the 90s."

"No, no, that was the one with the flags, totally different."

They never do find the place with the banners. But it's Madrid, so they get tapas anyway, from a sort of mixed restaurant-slash-bar-slash-nightclub just off the Plaza. The place is busy enough that Nicky can relax into the anonymity of a crowd, feeling loose with good food and cold beer and warm company. He and Joe maintain the flow of easy conversation, as usual, while Andy keeps one wary eye on their surroundings and Nile drinks it all in, bopping her head a bit to the music.

"Oh!" Nile's eyes light up, prompted by absolutely nothing Nicky can discern. "This is my _jam!_ Come on, one of y'alls gotta dance with me."

She's already on her feet, swaying rhythmically from side to side like she just can't help herself. Nicky's never had much of an ear for music -- a lot of the modern stuff all just sounds the same to him -- but Joe follows her with a laugh, taking Nile's hand and letting her tug him out onto the crowded dance floor. He slants a smirk back over his shoulder at Nicky as he goes, and Nicky lifts his glass in a toast. Joe's always enjoyed music and dancing. Nicky enjoys watching him enjoy it. It's all good.

Nile dances like she fights, raw and strong and fluid, flowing from one move to the next, more instinctual than graceful but strangely compelling all the same. Joe follows her lead, adapting to her style. This isn't his usual sort of music, isn't how he normally dances, but you'd never know it by looking at them. They're learning each other's moves. Team bonding, Nicky thinks, hiding his grin behind the rim of his glass.

Multicolored lights flash across their skin like firelight. Nile's dark eyes gleam.

"She looks like--" Andy starts, then cuts herself off. It doesn't matter. Nicky agrees. She does. Completely different, of course, but still the same.

"Joe will be happy to have a dance partner again," is all he says.

The song changes again, and Nile and Joe return to the table, laughing together. A trickle of sweat works its way down Joe's neck. It would taste of salt. Nile must see the look in his eyes, because she gives him a wink. "Hey Nicky, you wanna cut in?"

Joe's teeth flash white against his dark beard. "Maybe later," Nicky says. Joe's smile widens.

"How about you?" Nile asks Andy, holding out a hand. "Thousands of years on this earth, you can't tell me you don't know how to dance."

Andy goes still. Her gaze is distant. Nicky imagines she's seeing firelight glinting in dark eyes, that very particular curve of soft lips, so like Nile's yet completely different.

Nile wiggles her fingers. "So what do you say, milady?"

"Thank you, but no," Andy says. She gets to her feet, ignoring Nile's proffered hand. "I'm getting another round, same again?" She melts into the crowd without waiting for a response.

Nile blinks, dropping her hand to her side. "Uh, did I overstep or something?"

"Don't worry about it," Nicky tells her. "You know what, sure, I'll dance with you."

He's a terrible dancer, but when you live long enough, you stop caring about what other people think of you. Joe dances with them both as well, mostly to mock him. Eventually Nile gets drawn away by another attractive young person, and then another, and it's just Nicky and Joe swaying gently to the pulsing beats of the bass. "It never fails to amuse me," Joe murmurs, breath warm against Nicky's ear, "how you can move so gracefully in battle and yet so ineptly on the dance floor."

Nicky smiles, eyes closed, letting him lead. "I suppose it is a different rhythm."

When the night ends, Nile slips away with a beautiful young Spaniard, giving them a wink and a nod in passing. "Do you even _speak_ Spanish yet?" Nicky asks as she goes.

Her cheek dimples a little as she smiles. "I know the word _amor_ , seems like a good place to start!"

Joe laughs, still pressed close in his arms, and Nicky can feel it rumble against his chest. "Let her be young," he advises. "While she still remembers how."

Nicky slips his hands into the back pockets of Joe's jeans, tucking his chin on Joe's shoulder. Behind them, he can see Andy sitting alone at their table, glass in hand, staring out at nothing in particular. "Do you still remember what that felt like?" he asks quietly. "Being young?"

Joe's hand comes up to cup his nape, his callused fingers scritching gently through short hair. "With you, I think I do."

Nicky presses his smile into the curve of Joe's neck, and they dance.

* * *

**Storge**

In the end, Sebastien Le Livre finds them, not the other way around. This is unusual, Nico thinks. Not that he has a strong sense of normality in these cases -- he and Joe were the youngest for so very long -- but from the blank surprise in Andy's eyes when Le Livre slips into the booth beside her, in this quietly prosperous London inn, this was something she had not anticipated.

Well, it's not the first time they found Le Livre, after all. Perhaps it's different after a few decades' separation. He and Joe have certainly been the ones to find Andromache a time or twelve, and Le Livre is a clever one. But he is still so _new_.

His face somehow has new lines etched into it, though he otherwise does not look a day older than when last they saw him in Russia. His eyes, too, do not look so young anymore. So it goes. It's strange to be able to chart the effects of immortality on a new face this way, after so long with just the three of them. (Just the four of them, once. Now again, perhaps?)

"You were right," Le Livre says -- to Andy, mainly, though he directs it down into the worn oak grains of the table. "It is not possible to love them and yet outlive them."

Nico glances sidelong at Joe, who presses his warm hand against Nico's thigh under the table even as he gives Le Livre a sympathetic smile. "It is always possible to love. But it is hard, yes. Harder for them, I think."

"What would you know," Nico mutters under his breath. Joe squeezes his knee gently.

"Your sons?" Andy asks Le Livre. He just shakes his head and waves for the barkeep to bring him some ale. "Well," she goes on eventually. "I told you we would be here for you when you were ready. Are you?"

Le Livre huffs out a laugh. There's no mirth in it. "Ready? I suppose. Not much choice, is there?"

"No," Andy agrees. She's always been a bit merciless in this way. "Not for us."

Later that night, when they've all drunk more than they ought, they retreat upstairs to the rooms they've rented above the inn. Only two rooms, of course. They hadn't expected Le Livre to be joining them. Andy bids them farewell at her door, and Joe and Nico exchange a shrug. So they'll be hosting a guest for the night.

Le Livre stares after her for a little too long. "I remember when I first dreamed of her," he murmurs. "So fierce, and so beautiful, with those eyes like ice. And when you all first found me in Russia, I thought, my God, she's even lovelier than my dreams. But that's not quite right, is it? She's hard as steel."

"A blade can be beautiful," Joe remarks. He gives Nico a sidelong smile. Incurable romantic, that one, Nico thinks fondly. It would be nice to think that Andy might not be so alone anymore, but it's far too soon.

"She may invite you to join her, one of these years," Nico tells Le Livre, gentle but firm. "Or she may not. Best not to ask too much of her too quickly."

"I didn't--" Le Livre flushes bright red, to the very roots of his hair. "That is, I wasn't--"

Nico laughs, not unkindly, and leads the way to their own room. "I meant no insult. After so many centuries together, you learn the value in speaking plainly."

"We're all we have, Sebastien," Joe explains. "What is the use of eternal companionship if we cannot understand one another?"

"I...see," Le Livre says slowly.

The door closes behind them, and he looks around the room. Only one bed, of course. Nico busies himself with collecting some spare blankets and pillows from the trunk at the foot of the bed. "It's not much, but I imagine you've slept on far worse," he remarks, making up a makeshift bed for Le Livre on the floor. "I remember Russia."

"I'd prefer not to," Le Livre says, voice bone dry. He looks to the bed, then the two of them. It's not unusual for traveling companions to share a bed in tight quarters, and he makes no comment, just strips off his outerwear, movements jerky and uncoordinated with the effects of too much drink. Eventually he plops down to sit atop the trunk, staring down at the improvised bedroll.

Joe and Nico exchange a look. Joe shrugs and begins making his own preparations for sleep, leaving Nico to sit tentatively beside their new friend. "Are you all right?"

"She was right," Le Livre says hollowly. "How can any love survive eternity?"

Behind him, Nico can hear Joe hum softly in response. He reaches a hand back to the bed without looking, and Joe covers it with his own, lacing their fingers together for just a moment. "There are many loves," Nico replies, keeping his tone low and measured. "Many forms that love can take." A memory brushes through his thoughts like a warm breeze, and he smiles. "I was once told that the ancient Greeks had seven different words for love, for different kinds of love. And life is long. Do not give up on it so easily."

"Yeah? I've read about the Greeks. Eros, agape...I can't remember the rest." Le Livre looks down at his hands. Nico had forgotten that he'd been a scholar. Still was a scholar at heart, perhaps. That could come in useful. "Love for family, that was another one, whatever that word was."

Nico shrugs. "My Greek has never been very good."

"Your Greek is an abomination to God and men," Joe mutters, in Italian this time, and Nico chuckles.

"I've read about the ancient Greeks," Le Livre repeats, and this time he meets Nico's eyes. "They had words for what two men did together, too."

On the bed, Joe goes still and wary, but Nico doesn't read revulsion in Le Livre's eyes. He's a scholar. He's thinking things through. "Did they?" Nico remarks. "A bit before our time, you realize. We're only seven hundred years old or so."

Le Livre smiles slightly. "Only, huh? I suppose I have a lot yet to learn."

He drops the subject, and makes no remark when Joe curls protectively around Nico on the bed. But later, after he's been still and quiet long enough that Nico thought he must be asleep, he murmurs into the darkness, "I'm glad you found me."

"Of course, Sebastien," Joe says, his arm tightening around Nico. His voice is rich and warm with approaching sleep. "You're family."

* * *

**Philia**

Nicolo loves to watch Yusuf draw. It's mesmerizing, to see entire worlds unfurl across blank paper, how the rhythmic scratch of chalk or charcoal can bring life to the page. He has a particular talent for faces, for capturing the essence of a person in only a few strokes. Nicolo could watch him forever, he thinks, and is thrilled and awed anew each time with the knowledge that he _will_. He may have an uneasy relationship with his God, after several centuries witnessing so many horrors enacted in His name, but this, his Yusuf, their immortality together, will never stop being miraculous.

They are making their way along what Andromache tells them was once the Silk Road, en route to Constantinople, a city Nicolo and Yusuf once knew intimately but have not visited in well over a century. Nicolo is admittedly curious to see what the Ottomans have done with the place. Yusuf just mutters under his breath whenever it's mentioned, but they'll bring him around eventually.

But for now, the sun is high overhead, and they are resting beneath the shade of their tent, waiting out the worst of the midday heat. The only indulgence Yusuf permits himself, as a traveler, is his stash of drawing materials: bound papers and chalk and charcoal. Andromache scoffs at the expense, but never attempts to gainsay it -- she has no talent for art herself, but a keen appreciation for its beauties. And Quynh always travels with brushes and inks herself, her calligraphy and ink paintings as lovely as Yusuf's sketches. In some ways, Yusuf has more in common with her than with Nicolo. Nicolo used to be jealous of it, in earlier days, still insecure in his love's eternal affections, worried they might grow bored of one another and move on. Ah, well, the follies of youth.

"Who is that?" he asks, bending his head close to Yusuf's. The sketch is a simple one, of a handsome young man with a broad, smiling face, skin shaded dark with charcoal. "He looks familiar."

Nicolo thinks back to the last few trading posts they'd stopped at, filtering through memories of the men they'd seen there. They've lived a long time. The faces all begin to blur into one another. But this one nags at him, tugs a thread in his memory.

"I'm not sure," Yusuf admits. "But I dreamed of him last night. It was not the first time."

Perhaps his was a face from Nicolo's dreams as well. The thought doesn't even strike him as strange, given their lives. "He looks like he has a happy nature," he remarks. "Like someone _you_ would befriend in the marketplace."

Yusuf tilts his head, smiles into Nicolo's face. His eyes are warm. "You know I would prefer to only dream of you, my heart."

"I would prefer it if you only dreamt of me, as well," Nicolo teases back. "Despite my less-than-happy nature."

"I can think of a few ways to sweeten your temper."

"Boys," Quynh says above them, voice rich with amusement. "What are you snickering over like children?"

Nicolo leans back on his elbows and grins up at her, squinting against the sunlight. "The man of Yusuf's dreams."

She kneels down beside them to have a look. A glance is enough. The sly smile slips from her face. "Ah."

Yusuf is still looking at Nicolo, doesn't catch the change in her mien. "Nico thinks he must have a happy nature."

"He did," Quynh murmurs. She reaches out and traces the charcoal lines, the curve of the dream-man's smile. "And a sweet one."

It's enough. Nicolo and Yusuf exchange a glance, seeing the same understanding alight in the other's eyes. "Lykon," Nicolo says, not asking.

Quynh nods. "Lykon. It is an excellent likeness, Yusuf." Her smile is wistful as she takes the drawing into her own hands. "You would have gotten on well, I think. He was always so charming, so playful. I remember, when Andy and I first found him in Judea, he kissed my fingertips and told me I was even lovelier than his dreams."

"Did you put a knife in his throat for it?" Yusuf asks drily.

"Oh, Andromache certainly did. He laughed as he died, and when he awoke, he cajoled me to be the next to bless his skin with a blade."

Nicolo smirks. "Kinky. We used to do that, too."

Not really. After those first long weeks of fighting and killing and dying and awakening still side by side, they had lost the taste for watching each other die. But Yusuf chuckles low in his throat and wraps his hand around Nicolo's all the same. Nicolo slings his other arm low around Quynh's waist. She leans into him, still clutching the scrap of paper bearing her old friend's face. Her heartbeat is so quick and light, like a bird's.

"May I show this to Andy?" she finally asks.

Yusuf regards her closely. "Are you sure she'd want to see it?"

Quynh shrugs. "Perhaps not. But I think it would do her good to remember his smile."

Yusuf leans over Nicolo between them to place a kiss on her cheek, which is all the answer she needs. Nicolo tightens his grip on both of them, staring down at the joyful face of a man he never knew, while Andromache sings quietly to herself from inside the tent just behind them, and imagines he can hold them all in this moment forever.

* * *

**Eros**

They've been hired on as caravan guards for a wealthy merchant en route to Tunisia; Yusuf is cheerful, pleased to be returning to the land of his birth, if only for a brief visit. Andromache caught his arm at one point, before they set out, inquiring in a hard voice if he was likely to encounter anyone who knows him well.

"My family believes me dead these thirty years and more," he assured her gravely. "I doubt any of them yet live. And we're not even entering the city."

It's been a little over a year since Andromache and Quynh found them, since Nicolo and Yusuf learned that they were not alone in their mysterious invincibility. Nicolo is not yet sure he trusts these heathen warrior women who claim to have walked the earth since before the time of Christ. But Yusuf just kisses him sweetly and tells him to have faith, and Nicolo finds himself helpless to argue further.

He's keeping an eye on them, though.

The caravan stops at an oasis for the night, a blessing -- a place to refill their water skins, and wash off some of the accumulated sand and grime of a week of hard travel. The mood is celebratory. A couple of the traders have instruments with them, some sort of lute with many strings and a long reed flute, and they play together merrily. There are a few different campfires set up -- the desert grows chill by night -- and though the four immortals have their own fire, they can hear the music clearly. It still sounds haunting and strange to Nicolo's ears, though he left his own country behind many years ago now, but Yusuf smiles so widely it seems to split his face in two, and Nicolo's heart swells painfully in his chest to see him so happy.

Quynh smiles at Yusuf, too, and eventually takes his hand to lead him in a dance. The firelight flickers red and gold against her smooth black hair, glints like mischief in her dark eyes, and Yusuf laughs. They make a handsome couple, Nicolo thinks, his throat tight. They dance like they fight, so different from one another, yet with the same fluid grace, the same fierce joy in it.

"Beautiful," Andromache murmurs, an echo of his own thoughts. "Don't you agree?"

He nods, unable to find any words for it. They watch the dancers in silence for long minutes.

"You're lucky, you know," she says at last. "Both of you, to have found each other. To have awoken together. I was alone for such a very long time before I first dreamed of Quynh."

He tries to imagine it. What it might have been like, to have been slain on that battlefield but awoken alone. To be killed again and again, each time by a new enemy, always gasping back to life alone. How might his heart have turned bitter, after years upon countless years of such? It's horrible to think on.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, and means it. She meets his eyes and smiles. A true smile. The first they've exchanged. Emboldened by this, moved by her honesty, he dares to ask: "Do you love her?"

They know he loves Yusuf. He thinks perhaps everyone must know. He can't even begin to conceal it.

"Love," Andromache echoes, as though tasting the word. "Of course I do. It would be impossible not to. You will come to love her too, I think, given time."

This is harder for him to wrap his mind around. "I don't know that I would ever call that love."

"Wouldn't you?" She hums to herself, head tilted consideringly. "The Greeks used to have seven different words for love. Well. More, probably. But I remember seven." She shrugs. "There are many ways to love one another, and life is long. We've time enough for them all. It's the only thing that makes it worthwhile."

Before he can think of a response, Yusuf and Quynh return to them, laughing and breathless. Yusuf drops down onto the sand beside him, skin slick with sweat. He smells of salt and musk, and Nicolo's mouth goes very dry.

"Come, milady, will you not join me?" Quynh says teasingly to Andromache, her slender hand extended. "After thousands of years walking this earth, you surely must have had occasion to dance upon it."

Andromache smiles up into her dark eyes and takes her proffered hand.

"Come, _habibi_ ," Yusuf murmurs, so close that his beard tickles along Nicolo's neck. "Will you not join me?"

Nicolo closes his eyes, trying to keep his breathing even. "I cannot dance."

Yusuf presses a kiss into the soft skin just below his ear. "I promise you, this is a dance you know."

"We're meant to be guarding the camp…"

"Quynh said she and Andromache would take first watch." Yusuf continues tracing a line of kisses down toward Nicolo's collarbone, hot and sweet, and Nicolo's hands clench into fists in the sand. "The tent is all ours for the next few hours."

Nicolo gets to his feet so fast it makes his head spin, dragging a laughing Yusuf along into their tent.

He thinks perhaps it is a sort of madness that overtakes them both, every time they come together like this. He certainly had never known its like before they met. But then, he had been a priest until he took the cross, and continued to honor those vows right up until the moment he broke them, outside the walls of Jerusalem, with the very enemy infidel he'd sworn to kill. Impossible to think of him as such anymore. Impossible to imagine he ever could have. Surely God had brought them together like this. Surely their shared immortality is evidence of such.

It has been weeks since they've been able to steal time alone together like this, and Nicolo moves desperately against him, a dance he does indeed know very well. He clutches Yusuf impossibly close, tasting the salt of his skin, and gasps out the word for love in every language he knows.

He hopes to learn it in many more, given time, and still he imagines he will never have the words to describe the depth of his feelings for this man.

* * *

**Pragma**

This has easily been the worst decade of Nicolo's life to date, and that's saying something.

Losing track of Quynh and Andromache for so long, and then losing Quynh entirely to the hatred of the Church he'd once devoted his life and heart and eternal soul to...it broke something inside of him, something he's not quite willing to examine yet. It's broken Andy, too. If they are to ever meet another of their kind, Nicolo does not think she would tell them that _love_ is what makes their immortality worthwhile.

Ten years and more of searching futilely for any hint of where Quynh's body might be found, what stretch of ocean covers her, dead end after dead end, hiring ship after ship to dredge the depths...an impossible task. And then came the late-season storm, off the coast of Portugal. They were all able enough sailors, in their fashion, Andromache most of all, but this was the worst storm Nicolo had ever survived.

Well. _Survived_ was perhaps too strong of a term for it. He'd stumbled on the deck and lost his footing as a monster of a wave crashed over them, reached out for the rigging and couldn't find it, reached out for Yusuf and couldn't see him, and then there was nothing but the sea and the storm.

He drowned. More than once. But the storm passed with the night, and he'd awoken on a rocky beach with a slowly-healing broken femur and lungs full of saltwater.

That was more than a year ago, now. It had taken him this long to make his slow, lonely passage over land, penniless and starving and freezing through the winter, to one of their caches in western Spain. He left a letter there, too, in case Yusuf or Andy should drop by, but it wasn't one of their usual stomping grounds and he doubted they would try there first. So he continued onward.

Malta. When they were separated by seas, they made port in Malta. Every rendezvous point was determined based on the manner of their last parting. If they last saw one another in a city, they would reconvene in London. If it had been a desert, Tunis. If they departed by ship, Malta.

Nicolo and Yusuf have never needed a rendezvous point for one another. It was always them meeting Andy and Quynh. If the women had secret locations of their own should they become separated, Nicolo doesn't know of them. He and Yusuf have never been apart for more than the length of a job, and those were different. Missions had their own rules.

Quynh is gone, and Nicolo is alone. Perhaps none of the rules they've so carefully crafted over the centuries apply anymore. Still, he makes his way to Malta, even though stepping foot aboard a boat again makes his legs tremble and the bile rise in his throat. Stupid, he thinks, for his body to remember fear. He's died in so many different ways; why should drowning be any different?

(He thinks of the iron maiden those bastards had locked Quynh in, thinks of sinking to the bottom of the cold ocean, gasping and drowning and dying and waking again, over and over, for the ten years and more since they lost her.)

He conquers his fear. By the third day upon the Mediterranean, he moves like a sailor once more, helps earn his passage with labor above and belowdecks. He does not smile, though. He thinks he's forgotten how.

At last he reaches Malta. There is a bustling inn by the port, one he knows well. It's been forty or fifty years since they were last here; he doesn't think the paint on the sign has been touched up once in all that time.

He resettles his worn rucksack over his shoulder, takes a deep breath, and pushes open the door. Inside is dim compared to the bright sunlight outside, and he has to blink for a minute until his eyes adjust. He feels worn out, wrung out, thinks he could trace every year of his long life in the lines across his skin. He misses Yusuf in the very marrow of his bones, and Andy too. And Quynh. He wonders if this is how the women felt in the years after Lykon died, wonders how long it took for that ache to fade. If it ever did.

It's early in the morning yet, the common room mostly empty. There's a table in a secluded corner where he decides to settle in to wait. He may be here for weeks, for months. He doesn't mind. He has all the time in the world.

As it turns out, he barely has to wait an hour.

He sees them first, blinking in the dimness just as he had done. Perhaps they've taken rooms elsewhere. He can't move for long moments, can't find the breath to speak, to call to them. It's like being punched in the solar plexus. Andromache looks as tired as he feels, her dark hair shorn shorter than he's ever seen it, her blue eyes wandering restlessly across the room. And Yusuf…

Yusuf is so beautiful he has literally taken Nicolo's breath away. How could he have gone a year without the other half of his heart? It seems impossible to him now.

Andy catches sight of him before Yusuf. Her eyes widen, and she presses her hand to Yusuf's shoulder. That's all, the barest of touches. Yusuf turns. And then he moves like an arrow loosed from a bow, like a bullet from a musket.

It's quiet in the common room, mostly empty. Nicolo chose a secluded corner. This is good, very good, for it means there is no one to pay much mind when Yusuf collides into him, nearly knocking the table aside, before Nicolo can convince his traitorous legs to stand.

Yusuf straddles his lap, cupping his face in broad, warm hands, kissing his mouth, his brow, his cheeks, his mouth again. Nicolo wraps his arms around him tightly enough to hear his bones creak and kisses him back, drinking him in. He has no words, in any language. All he has is his love, and it is Yusuf's, and Yusuf is his.

"Never again," Yusuf finally whispers, pulling back enough to look him full in the eyes. His lashes are wet with tears. They aren't the sort of men who weep easily, but Nicolo's face feels damp as well. "Nico, promise me, never again, I cannot lose you like that again, it will be the end of me."

Nicolo presses his forehead against Yusuf's and promises, even though they both know it's not really a vow either of them can make.

Eventually, they calm one another enough to let go, at least for a little while. The common room is truly empty now, even of staff; Nicolo imagines that Andromache had something to do with that. She stands before them, pale and drawn, her blue eyes dark with pain. "Nicolo," she says softly. "I am truly sorry."

He manages a smile, crooked though it might be. "It was a storm, Andy. A storm and some fucking awful luck. Even the legendary Andromache of Scythia cannot control the weather. I don't hold you to blame."

From the dark glance Yusuf shoots her sidelong, Nicolo suspects that at some point, _he_ might have.

"Even so." She bows her head, looking older than he's ever seen her. "I'm calling off the search," she says, voice low and raw. "It's been more than ten years, and we're no closer to finding her than when we began. It ends now." When Nicolo opens his mouth to protest, she raises her head again, meeting his eyes with grim determination. "I can't risk you like that again. Either of you. I can't lose you, too."

"You haven't," Nicolo promises, and when he opens his arms, she stumbles willingly into them. After a few long moments' hesitation, Yusuf wraps his own arms around them both. Andy's breath hitches in what she'll never admit might be a sob, and Nicolo presses his cheek to her hair, feeling the soft brush of Yusuf's lips against the top of his own head, and lets himself breathe properly for the first time in years.

* * *

**Philautia**

Le Livre has been based out of America for long enough that he's calling himself Booker now. He shrugs and says he's tired of listening to the locals mangle the accent. Yusuf, who has been Joe for as long as Booker has known them, just smiles wryly.

Nico's pondering a change as well. He likes the sound of this particular nickname on Joe's lips, though. Maybe in another few decades.

With Booker's intelligence, their missions have become far more focused over the past seventy-odd years. It's strangely rejuvenating. The world seems to move faster these days, and they move with it. Plus, Nico really likes railroads.

"Union busters," Andy says thoughtfully. "It figures. Civilization becomes so efficient at labor that it winds up killing its laborers in pursuit of it, the workers have the temerity to actually ask to not die for someone else's profits, and now they're being killed for that, too." She shakes her head in disgust. "Well, Book, what did you have in mind?"

Booker smiles and unrolls a map of the Western states.

Nico's not really a planner, not the way Booker is. He's not a natural commander like Andromache. But he appreciates a plan, and knows how to execute a mission. He's a strong fighter. And he believes that the love he shares with Joe, with Andy, even with Booker -- that love, in whatever form it may take, can truly make the world a better place.

He began his immortality shedding blood in the service of hate. This feels so much better.

There is fighting, of course. There always seems to be. Colorado gets particularly violent for a while, and more than once Nico finds himself in standoffs between union strikers and corporate-hired soldiers, attempting to deescalate tensions before anyone can be killed. Joe just stands at his back and smiles grimly when it succeeds, or draws his weapon when it doesn't. Nico gets arrested with a group of miners and watches them beat the marshall into a bloody pulp. In a shithole mining town in the foothills, he watches in horror as the National Guard opens fire on the entire colony of miners and their wives and children, and has to spend five agonizing minutes waiting for Joe to shudder back to life, his body riddled with countless bullets from the machine guns.

But there are the quieter moments, too. Booker infiltrates the office of Rockefeller's cronies in Kansas City, and they steal tens of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment and ammunition for distribution among the strikers. When an alarming number of union organizers are arrested in Chicago, Andy digs deep into a few of their personal caches for bail funds.

One mining strike in the southwest enters its fourth month in the holiday season, a particularly bitter winter already. The families of the strikers are close to starving. Booker figures out how to divert a number of army supply trains, mostly food and blankets, and after a brief debate about the best way to get them to those in need, Nico coordinates their delivery to the local parish church, a shabby little structure with a priest known for being a union sympathizer.

It's well into the small hours of Christmas morning when Nico arrives at the church doors with several truckloads' worth of goods. The priest emerges while he's in the middle of quietly unloading, dressed hastily and carrying a rifle. Once the situation is explained, he sets aside the gun and rolls up his sleeves to help. He's a burly, plain-spoken man, nothing at all like Nico's memories of the priesthood he'd once known.

"What's your name, kid?" the priest asks, as they set the final crate down inside the church.

It takes Nico a moment to remember the Anglicized form of it. "Nicholas."

The priest barks out a laugh. "On Christmas, too? You've got to be kidding me. Good ol' Saint Nick." He shakes his head, still chuckling. "Well, Nicky, you've done the Lord's work tonight."

He remembers the Lord's work he'd once done, so many centuries ago, slaughtering the infidel in His holy name. But before that, he'd been a simple parish priest himself, however briefly. Ministering to the commonfolk of his humble flock, tending to the sick, collecting alms for the poor. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Nicky smiles. "Perhaps we have."

* * *

**Agape**

The world changes and it doesn't. Time seems to flow faster now, more urgently. And yet humanity remains much the same as ever.

Nicky likes Copley well enough, in his way. It's so rare that they're able to truly befriend one outside of their own; it's been several centuries since the last time he and Joe considered anyone else a friend. The rough edges around their relationship with Copley have smoothed down a bit since they first met. He's proven himself a valuable ally, and a willing one. 

"Every five years, on this day," Copley tells them, his voice warm and rueful. There's more silver than coal in his hair now. It suits him. "At least it began that way. Lately it's been every year."

Joe, who perfected the art of holding a grudge back in the Middle Ages, is stony-faced. "He's free to pass his time as he wills."

"I think it's time we reevaluated," Nile says. She leans casually back against the desk beside Copley. "He did help us out with Quynh."

"One good deed does not--"

"Love," Nicky says quietly. "A word?"

Joe allows himself to be gently tugged aside, though not so far that Copley and Nile can't listen in if they choose. Nile, at least, has earned a share in this discussion. But it gives them the distance for Joe to relax somewhat, drop his posturing. Sometimes the mere illusion of privacy is enough.

"We made a deal," Joe says. "It matters. Sebastien needs to understand--"

"He does, though." Nicky reaches out to grasp the hem of Joe's sleeve, rubbing the worn fabric between the pads of his fingertips. His thumb brushes against the soft skin of Joe's wrist. "I think we have loneliness enough, all of us, in our own ways. All humanity does. Some feel it more keenly than others."

Joe glares down at a spot somewhere on Nicky's chest. "Some deserve to."

"Do they?" Nicky tilts his head, waiting for Joe to meet his eyes. "Do you remember the storm at sea? When we were still searching for Quynh?"

At that, Joe shudders, clasping Nicky's hand convulsively, gripping hard enough to scrape the fine bones of his fingers together. "Vividly. Why do you bring that up now?"

"You blamed Andy for it," Nicky says softly. "She never said, neither of you did, but I could see it in the way you danced around each other. For years afterward. If it had taken me any longer to find my way back to you both…" He shakes his head. "I think you would have set her adrift if it would not have left you alone as well. I think once I returned, you would have done so anyway, if you thought I'd have let you."

Joe hisses between his teeth. "I certainly considered it."

"Why didn't you?"

It brings him up short. After a long moment, Joe knocks their foreheads together lightly. "Because she had lost half her heart already, and even in my rage, I could not be so cruel."

Nicky kisses him, just a brief press of lips. "There is not a cruel bone in your entire body."

"There might be," Joe whispers. "Without you."

He remembers a camp by an oasis, firelight glinting against Joe's rich curls, Andy's face in profile beside his. "We are the lucky ones, to have awoken together. We've never had to be so alone."

"Booker always had us."

"It's not the same, and you know it."

"Yes," Joe sighs. "I know it."

Nicky cards his fingers through Joe's hair, tugging gently. "Andy would be glad."

"Andy isn't here." After the whole ordeal with Quynh, she had taken off alone, though they still heard from her every now and then.

"Andy will come back," Nicky says firmly, sure of it with every fiber of his being. "And she would like to find her family together when she does, I think."

Joe sighs again, and releases him. There's a wry tilt to his smile. "Ah, well. I've never been able to say no to you, Nico."

Nicky returns his smile, and they turn back to the others. Nile is smirking to herself. Copley just looks vaguely mystified. "Are they always like this?" he asks Nile.

"Pretty much."

"Like what?" Joe demands, making a show of being affronted. "You never seen a couple before?"

Nile laughs. "It's not that part. It's...okay, I think I heard Italian, Arabic, a little French, and...Vietnamese, maybe? You catch any others, Copley?"

"There was a bit in the middle that sounded like Greek."

"Definitely not Greek," Joe says, appalled. "Have you ever heard his Greek? It's _atrocious_."

Nicky shrugs, grinning now. "I've never had a talent for languages."

"Dude, you literally just swapped between at least five different ones in the space of like a three-minute chat."

"Well, I've had a few centuries' worth of practice now." In all honesty, he doesn't even notice half the time. There are so many words. They're all worth knowing.

Maybe he should finally buckle down and perfect his Greek, after all.

The sun is sinking low in the sky when the three of them make their way to the quiet pub by the Thames. Copley had bid them a pleasant farewell, and Nile gave him a kiss on the cheek and a wink. They sleep together sometimes, Nicky thinks. He'd been appalled the first time he noticed, pointing out that Copley was old enough to be her father. She'd just wrinkled her nose. "Barely," she'd pointed out. "And anyway, it's a novelty, I wanna enjoy it while I can. In another decade or so, they're all gonna be young enough to be _my_ kids."

She's not wrong.

It's been twenty-five years to the day since they last set foot in here. The sign on the wall, freshly repainted, proclaims that patrons have trodden the flagstone floor here for over five hundred years. Nicky smiles every time he reads it. It still feels new to him.

Booker has chosen a secluded booth in a corner. He's staring down into a pint of ale, and doesn't notice them come in. Joe and Nicky exchange a look, and Nicky gives him a gentle push. With a sigh, Joe steps forward.

At his shoulder, Nicky can feel Nile's huff of laughter.

Joe slides onto the bench opposite Booker's. Booker looks up, blinks a few times. His expression is sad and wary, even now.

"Hey there, Sebastien," Joe says softly, in French. "You ready to come home?"

After a few long moments, Booker nods, his eyes filling with tears. Nicky laces his fingers through Nile's, glancing down to give her a quick smile, and together they head over to join them.

**Author's Note:**

> Per various sources, the seven words for love in Greek: Ludus - playful love; Storge - familial love; Philia - affectionate love, friendship; Eros - romantic, passionate love; Pragma - enduring love; Philautia - love of self; Agape - selfless, universal love

**Works inspired by this one:**

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